How to Assess The Needs of A Sport: My Blueprint for a Cyclocross Athlete
Years ago, I was at the first ever NSCA symposium on Combat Sports in Colorado Springs, CO. The focus was mostly on MMA and boxing, but even for the time, that was significant (this was years before the Reebok deal and nearly a decade before the ESPN deal for context). I was a very, very young strength and conditioning coach who had not yet started DiSalvo Performance Training.
While there, a fantastic coach to this day whose reputation precedes him, Loren Landow was speaking and presenting one afternoon and mentioned a story that I always thought was really cool. He recounted that one day, a former NFL football client of his called him up. He explained he was getting into mixed martial arts and would eventually be appearing on the UFC’s Ultimate Fighter reality show. He wanted to go in physically prepared and wanted to train with Coach Landow to get in fight shape for the sport that was experiencing an exponential increase in popularity. (For those interested, that fighter was Brendan Schaub).
At the time, obviously, there was no “book” written on this… MMA barely had utilized strength coaches with any real effectiveness or method. If you know anything about Coach Landow, he’s world class and a consummate professional. If anyone was up to the task, it would be him.
After some hesitation, Landow agreed to help him. He recounts researching what actually happened during an MMA fight and found himself floored by the different demands of energy systems, strength, and skill.
That story always stuck with me for a few reasons:
There was a time when MMA was so foreign to the sports science lexicon that established coaches were sitting and saying “huh?”
That time was not all that long ago, and…
What an amazing project and privilege it is to be one of the trailblazers of figuring out training methods for a “new” sport.
The closest I’ve come to being able to contribute to the strength and conditioning methods of a “new sport was my contributions to help Derrick Kennington for Combat Jiu Jitsu Worlds: The Welterweights in 2019. You could also argue I was one of the early ones to the sport of jiu jitsu, but that’s not a “new” sport.
Flash forward to January of 2021…
I get a call from a long time client of mine. He’s a very experienced endurance athlete who has a long history of marathon running and cycling as an amateur/recreationally, but at a very high level and interest.
He asked me if I had ever heard of a sport known as cyclocross.
Spoiler alert: I had not.
He explained that cyclocross is an off-road biking sport that combines a lot of the skills and feel of mountain biking with extremely rugged terrain that requires you to get off your bike and carry it regularly: sometimes through water, deep mud, or worse.
A quick YouTube search led me to some really crazy races and footage. I loved it. I was in.
He understood there was a long-term ramp up to compete in a sport like that, but he was ready to dive in and change his training to give himself the ability to perform.
How To Think About Training for a Niche Sport (or one with no established protocols)
So the ball was in my court. How do you prepare for something that has no “roadmap?” These are my favorite challenges and the ones I live for.
I typically do an assessment like this for any athlete of any sport, no matter how established or niche. It really was no different here in starting to break down cyclocross.
Assessment:
What is physically involved with the sport?
Skill Demands?
Energy Systems?
Strength Demands?
What are indicator lifts or metrics we can track and help/hope correlate (or what do we THINK will be the right metrics?)
Note: we’ll be speaking in generalities here. I’ll be happy to update this at a later date as the program coalesces.
What Does the Sport Physically Involve?
The tendency here is for many to overthink things. Instead, just write down what you see about the sport. In my case, I generally did what you see below. It’s an observational assessment of what is in front of you or on screen with the sport:
In cyclocross, they ride a steel framed bike (usually) that weights between 20-30lbs on average
They wear light gear, probably not enough to make a difference in movement.
They are riding a bike or essentially hiking with their bikes, while taking laps around trails/tracks of mixed terrain.
2. Skill Demands
Is this a sport that is largely dictated by your skills practice, with little input from the strength and conditioning side, or is heavily dependent on numbers in the weightroom (powerlifting, weighlifting). Most sports will be somewhere in between.
In the case of cyclocross, there is a heavy component of skills practice accomplished by time on the bike, but it’s complicated by the fact that you must work with your sports coach on how to handle various terrain, strategize on when to be off your bike, how to transition, etc. All of this is to say that there will be plenty of time devoted to work on the bike in a sports sense and my role will be to help facilitate and improve that via the weight room and our conditioning methods.
3. Energy Systems
More simply put: conditioning. Understanding where you fall here is essential. Is the sport highly aerobic or highly anaerobic? In between? Most will have a combination, but it pays to know where the biggest ROI is, especially if you don’t have a long time to train with an athlete.
The time on the bike will cover quite a bit of the conditioning aspect itself. This is something that will be key down the road in determining total training volume and what we should be doing “off the bike” (ie: with me the strength coach). One way we’ll establish this is heart rate monitoring and data + the power output data to determine the necessary conditioning work outside the actual sport work.
4. Strength Demands
Strength always matters, but how much? What’s enough? Will we ever know (probably not!), but more importantly, what strength do you need to have to the point where you won’t be held back?
Cyclocross is interesting because it is not a sprint like track-racing cycling, and it’s definitely not a Tour de France in total volume and mileage. It exists between, but closer to track racing in my view and has a great deal of terrain diversity. There will be times to sprint, but more importantly, there is a great deal of starting and stopping. This means there inevitably is going to be an anaerobic component and a need for repeatability in ability to create bursts of power. This is something strength training can help accomplish. We’ll build the horsepower and upgrade the engine.
5. Indicator Lifts and Important Metrics
The simple way to think about this is: what exercises can we improve on that will noticeably affect the work on the bike/in the sport. Does an exercise(s) even exist? We’ll find out!
Having had some experience with cyclists, I know core training and the ability to stay “tucked” in the core while maintaining optimal posture will be paramount. For me, this would accomplish a functional hypertrophy aspect of the training, as improving here will enable the athlete to do what they do best.
Beyond this, as mentioned above, sufficient horsepower and repeatable power output will also be immensely important. We’ll use both Squats and Deadlifts to build overall strength, and use a to-be-determined series of max/sustained wattage sprints on an air bike to measure and build power repeatability. I will admit up front that the bike will have to be used carefully, as there will already be plenty of miles on the athlete in terms of "time on a bike,” so optimal frequency here will be updated.
This was intended to be a primer and something that I will elaborate on as we dive more into the program itself. I hope this gives you a rough framework on how you can organize your own needs assessment for a sport. I’ll fill it in with more specificity as we continue onwards.